Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 12 - Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Good-for-Nothing Sario

Early summer.

One day, on my travels, I found myself in the Principality of Alessari. According to what I had heard, it was a place with a very strong sense of public order. Visitors said it was an amazing place full of kindhearted people.

For example, if a traveler lost her way, it was almost a given that someone would intervene—not only that, the people there would even walk with you to your destination, chatting all the way. I’d heard that sometimes they would even buy you something to eat or drink.

My goodness, what a wonderful place.

By the way, saying a place has a strong sense of public order is another way of saying that the people there absolutely do not tolerate deviance. The people in Alessari considered lying and betrayal to be unforgivably serious crimes.

The person who had told me about the Principality of Alessari had made a comment to that effect.

“It’s a country that is uncomfortable for good-for-nothings but comfortable for virtuous people,” they’d said.

I see, I see.

“Well then, it will be a good place for me.”

I had given such an offhand answer at the time. Then, without giving it any particular thought, I ended up arriving in that very same place on this day.

I passed through the city gates and walked through the town.

Just as the rumors had said, everyone was great.

“Welcome to the Principality of Alessari!”

I walked down the road with the sound of a saluting soldier’s greeting at my back.

“Good day, Lady Witch. Where are you from?”

“If you like, how about coming in for a drink at our bar? Oh, of course, there’s no charge, heh-heh.”

“You must be tired from your long journey. I could prepare you a very nice room at our inn.”

The town was just bursting with kindness beyond kindness.

Just by walking around a little, I had been beckoned in by all sorts of businesses. People were calling out to me. I’d gotten all sorts of information, like which of the many local restaurants were the tastiest and what trends were popular there lately.

When I approached a roadside stall selling bread, I was told to take some freshly baked loaves. “It’s fine, it’s fine, no charge. Take it and go!”

It was a good place.

A good place full of good people.

Truly, truly, the city was filled with only honest, upright, good people, to the point that it made me dizzy.

“…………”

I left there about three hours after my stay began.

Three hours.

At that length of time, it would be more accurate to say I had passed through rather than stayed there.

My time there was so short that when I left, the same soldier made a puzzled face as he asked, “Huh…? Leaving so soon…?”

It was a lovely place, filled with nothing but good people. Yet despite being surrounded by kind people, I had returned to the front gate in just three hours. The soldier seemed to find this extremely strange, strange enough that he asked me timidly, “By some chance, did the people of our city commit some act of discourtesy toward you, Lady Witch…?”

“No, no.” I shook my head. “I’m not leaving because I found it unpleasant or anything.”

I had come for a single purpose.

And when I say purpose, I mean I had just dropped in because there was one thing I’d wanted to confirm.

“I wanted to check whether or not this photograph was widespread in town.”

As I said that, I held the photo up to show him.

It was a single photograph, taken by a good-for-nothing local.

Let me back up a little, back to late winter.

One day, I was flying over a silvery-white landscape on my broom, having just departed from a small, remote village.

The sky was high, blue, and clear, and there wasn’t a single footprint in the direction I was headed. I drew a line with the tip of my broom through the white world where no one had tread yet. Above the gentle slope, drawing a single line as I went, I proceeded along what I thought was the road, though I hadn’t actually seen it yet.

I took a breath and filled my expanding chest with cold air.

The bright sunlight lit up the desolate winter trees with red.

Riding along on my broom, I took another big breath.

Wow—

“There’s nothing out here…”

There’s really nothing. It’s magnificent…

The mountain road I was traveling down was, after all, just an ordinary road covered in snow. No matter how far I progressed down the road, there would be nothing to see; it was really just a throughway and nothing more.

There was nothing at all, as far as the eye could see.

Just the same white world continuing on until the snow disappeared.

The only thing to do was to draw pictures in the snow with my broom to kill time. In short, I was pretty bored.

“…………?”

That wasn’t the only reason, but I think it’s part of why I was so quick to notice that something unusual was taking place on the road ahead of me.

Over the tip of my broom handle, in the direction I was traveling, I spied several people and one creature.

I could see that the small creature, the size of a kitten, was sitting politely in a beautiful field of snow.

It was a little bit bigger than an average kitten, and its body was covered in beautiful white fur with a black speckled pattern. Its legs were short, and its figure was round overall—a silhouette that reminded me of a snowman.

“…What is that thing?”

I squinted at it as I brought my broom to a stop.

I did not do this because the catlike creature was particularly strange. I mean, I won’t deny that I got a little excited at the sight of an animal I had never seen before. But what really puzzled me was, if anything, the thing farther down the road—in the direction the catlike creature was gazing as it yawned.

There were three human figures.

“Uaaah! Aaaaaaaaahhh!”

A young woman was lying faceup on the snow and screaming. She struggled and flailed on the snow and covered her face with both hands to protect it. Maybe because she was wearing white clothes, it looked a bit like she was dissolving away into the snow.

And mercilessly swinging clubs down at her were the figures of two men. The pair were dressed suspiciously in cloaks, and they showed no mercy, no restraint or hesitation; they were probably putting all their strength into harming that lone woman.

“Uaaaaaahhh!”

The woman screamed.

“…………”

I had no idea what sort of circumstances could lead up to such a scene. Maybe the two suspicious-looking men had their reasons. Maybe there was a reason for the woman screaming in the snow to be beaten.

But I had no doubt about the fact that it was not a scene I wanted to watch.

I’m fully aware that it’s a fool’s game to feel pity and bemoan the sight of someone getting hurt without knowing a thing about the circumstances. But even knowing that, as an outsider, I reflexively sided with the weaker party.

So I got down off my broom.

Then I pulled out my wand and walked toward the woman, first of all casting a spell to separate her from the two men.

“Um, are you all ri—?”

But—

“Wrooooooooong!”

Immediately after I tried to intervene—

—the woman leaped to her feet with an angry roar loud enough to echo off the snowy mountains. Her long brown hair was disheveled, and she brushed the snow off herself in such a wild manner that she didn’t seem like a grown woman.

In her hand was a wand.

Her white clothes consisted of a robe and a long skirt—in short, she was a mage. From what I could see, she wore neither a brooch nor a corsage. She must have been a novice.

By the way, she was pretty lively for someone who had just been severely beaten.

“That was all wrong, you idiots! Aaaaaagh!”

As soon as she stood up, she brandished her wand in the air. “Grrraaah!” Without hesitation, she struck one of the men with all her strength. “Rrraaahhh!” Then she hit the other one hard with a ferocious kick.

—Are you not using magic…?

All I could do as I watched her bizarre behavior from a distance was stand there with my mouth hanging open. It was very curious to see her resort to violence without using a bit of magic. But stranger than that was the fact that, though a bit of snow clung to the body of this woman as she attacked the two men with all her might, I could spot no apparent wounds on her.

Her face was also completely unscathed.

I was sure that until just a moment before, the two men had been beating her without mercy. I would have expected her to have sustained some injuries, even minor ones, and yet—

“What is wrong with you guys? Why can you only move in such a plodding way?! Try to move more like people, for once!”

The brown-haired mage delivered more flying kicks to the two men, who lay in the snow.

“…………”

—Do you not use magic…?

I had been just standing there in bewilderment watching it all go down, so I had absolutely no understanding of what was happening.

The only thing I understood was that the two men who had just been savagely kicked were not human.

The bodies of the two men crumbled into bits, melted into mush, and disappeared, leaving stains on the snow.

Apparently, the two of them were like puppets, made with magic.

“By the way, who are you?”

The woman with brown hair seemed to have settled down and recovered her composure. She was still tightly gripping her wand as she turned to face me.

There wasn’t a trace of the earlier violence left on her face, and she gazed at me with a wide smile. Her eyes were clear.

She looked to be in her early twenties.

She wore a smile that was, in a way, friendly and affable.

“Hello. How unexpected, to meet someone all the way out here.”

“Heh-heh-heh,” she laughed.

“…………”

No, it’s impossible…

I was not the kind of person who was capable of returning a carefree smile after witnessing that whole sequence of events, from the scene of the woman being heavily beaten by the puppets, to her driving her own punches and kicks home…

“Oops. Sorry, sorry. Looks like I caused kind of a strange misunderstanding, huh?”

She shrugged. I was focused on backing away from her, but she didn’t seem to pay any mind. She held her wand up in front of her face and prepared a slip of paper.

Right after she did, a mass of magical energy emitted from the tip of her wand, wavering hazily like smoke before settling into a single shape.

It took the form of a kind of square box, with a round lens on it pointed my way. The longer I looked at it, the more it resembled a camera.

“…What is that thing?”

I’m not very perceptive.

Instead of answering me, the woman pressed down on her wand with the tip of her finger.

Immediately, a flash of light came from the tip of the wand, and a slip of paper fluttered through the air and landed under me.

On the paper was an image of me making a befuddled face.

It seemed she had cast a spell to take an instant photo.

“Everything I did before, I did so I could photograph it. I was just testing whether or not I could get some photos using puppets.”

She smiled. “By any chance, did it look like some bad guys were beating up on an innocent young girl? Well, as you can see, such men do not exist.”

She pointed to the stains spreading across the snow and smiled.

…………

No……

“If I had to say, it looked more like a scary mage was harassing two men, but…”

She smiled again.

“Such a mage does not exist either.”

After she had taken some pictures of the snowy mountains, the woman said, “My tent is just over there. It must be fate that brought us here together, so let’s at least have a cup of tea,” and showed me the way.

It was too cold outside to stand around talking forever, and I was curious about her. I figured there was no reason to refuse.

On the way, as we tramped through the snow—

As if to guide us, a small creature walked ahead, swinging its tail. I walked along, following the cute footprints it left in the snow.

But what on earth was this little creature?

I tilted my head, wondering about it, and the woman beside me turned to me as if she had just remembered something. “Oh, come to think of it, I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Sario. Nice to meet you.”

She held out her hand.

A handshake, huh?

“I’m Elaina. The Ashen Witch. I’m a traveler,” I answered as I lightly shook her hand. It was chilly with the winter cold.

“As you can see, I am a novice. And I’ve got no interest in a career as a mage. What I’m interested in is this right here.” She produced the box from the tip of her wand. It was a type of spell for taking photos. I went ahead and flashed her a peace sign, but she put the camera away. “I just took one of you.”

According to Sario, it was important never to take photographs unless they would make money.

Oh, come on.

“So my face doesn’t have any resale value…?”

That’s a little disheartening…

“No, it’s just not the type of photo I want to take,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m not interested in landscapes or pictures of pretty people and cute animals.”

“Pretty people…”

You’re making me blush…

“Do you like your own face that much?” Sario was openly astonished. “Anyway, I want to take photographs for the news. That’s why I don’t really snap ordinary scenery or portraits.”

“News photographs?”

But I don’t see how that would ever lead to you be viciously beaten with clubs by two men…

I was confused, but it didn’t seem like Sario noticed my bewilderment. She looked down at the little creature that was leaving us a trail of footsteps.

“Oh yeah, I haven’t introduced that little guy yet, have I?” Sario said. “His name is Pochi. He’s my pal.” She casually introduced the little creature.

“Pochi…?”

“Great name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure…,” I replied.

It does have a cute ring to it.

“What kind of creature is he?” I asked.

Pochi resembled a cat, but his body was too round for a cat, and his legs were too short, and his fur was too long. He seemed to be a curious creature that was catlike but not a cat. Though his cries sounded just like a cat’s.

“His species are called angiers. You don’t know about them?”

“I’m a traveler, so…”

“They live in the region around here. They’re pretty rare.”

According to Sario, the creatures known as angiers primarily lived in the snowy mountains of the region.

They very rarely appeared before humans, and even when fully grown, they were smaller than house cats. They were perfectly suited to their silvery-white environment: When they were in the snow, their small size and the color of their fur made them nearly invisible.

Angiers were highly wary and would immediately take flight at the sight of a human figure.

However, Sario’s companion, Pochi, who was leading the way for us, seemed to have taken a liking to humans.

“This one’s a little strange,” she said, gazing down at her little pal.

Then, a little farther ahead, there was a tent big enough for a single person. In front of it was a single chair.

“You can sit down.”

Sario urged me to sit, then went into the tent, brought out a spare chair, and sat down across from me.

There was a single piece of wood stuck in the ground between us. Her companion, Pochi, jumped up onto her lap and curled into a ball, then she waved her wand and set fire to the stick.

The magical fire gave off heat between us as it flickered wildly in the winter wind.

“Warm, huh?” Sario chuckled.

According to her, the stick was a type of magical tool, a convenient device that could create a bonfire in a snowfield.

“So I see…” I could feel the strength draining from my whole body in the faint warmth of the fire. I let out a sigh. “But what were you taking pictures of, in a cold place like this?”

I feel like this is a pretty harsh environment without the fire.

I had just been passing through and was planning to leave as soon as possible, but from what I could see, Sario was staying in this place for a while. Long enough to set up a tent anyway.

The photos she had to take must have been important enough to warrant that.

“If you go a little bit south of here, there’s a country called the Principality of Alessari.”

When she said that, I looked around at my surroundings.

Everything was covered in a blanket of snow, as far as the eye could see. From where we were, I couldn’t see anything that looked like civilization. The Principality of Alessari must have been fairly distant from where we were.

Sario flicked her wand and brought two teacups floating out of the tent by magic.

I guess she couldn’t be bothered to move.

“You can’t see it from here, but Alessari is my home. The springs are warm, and it snows in the winter. Summertime is fairly cool, and you can see colorful leaves in the fall. There are many people who are far too nice, and I hear it has a fine reputation for its kind residents. And for having a strong sense of public order.”

“…………”

A teacup full of tea drifted in front of me.

As I nodded to her and accepted the tea, I responded, “So it’s a nice place, then?”

“Yeah. I hate it, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s too nice, and there’s no one else vulgar like me there.”

“You’re being awfully kind to me, for someone who calls herself vulgar.” I pointed at the teacup on my knee and the small fire dancing between us.

“No, no, I’m more than vulgar enough.”

No way. Listen, I know what this is. I know that people who torture themselves like this are good at heart. And you must be that type of person. You can’t fool me!

“By the way, Miss Witch, are you familiar with outrage marketing? Heh-heh-heh.” Sario’s expression slacked as soon as she asked me.

She made roughly the same sort of face I would have made if there was a large sum of money in front of me.

“…………”

Uh-oh, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

“People are extremely fond of angiers in my hometown, right, and they sell for a high price. I told you this earlier, but angiers are very wary, and they rarely come out in front of humans. It’s basically impossible to get your hands on a wild angier.”

“So where did you get your buddy Pochi?”

“Hmm? Oh, poaching.”

“What?!”

“Kidding. I just bought him.” I couldn’t be sure the extent to which she was telling the truth, but the companion on her lap let out a yawn at her words.

Sario looked down at him lovingly and stroked his soft fur as she said, “Recently, people have been getting wind of the money they can get for the sweet, adorable angiers, and there’s been a never-ending stream of people trying to poach them. Do you remember those puppets that were beating up on me earlier?”

“Yeah.” I nodded.

I think I’ll be seeing them in my nightmares for a while.

“Guys who look like that have been poaching the angiers in these hills lately. This area is pretty remote, and the angiers that live here aren’t as cautious as the ones that live in other places. If you lure them in with food, you can easily catch them.”

“Not very cautious…”

My gaze automatically dropped to her lap.

“No, this guy’s different.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I can pretty much tell what you want to say.”

How rude! said Sario’s expression.

She had said that she wanted to take news photos, so I assumed she probably wanted to photograph a scene of the angiers being hunted. But—

“So then, the reason why you came to this secret spot where the angiers are being poached was to take pictures using those strange puppets? What on earth for?” I tilted my head in puzzlement.

“No, no, what I really wanted to do was take real pictures, okay? I wanted to track the actual hunters doing the poaching and capture their crimes on film so that I could take the evidence back home. But for some reason, I seem to be having bad luck these past few days.”

“You weren’t able to catch them red-handed?”

“I’ve just spent the last few days playing with wild angiers…”

“Sounds like the poachers are the wary ones…”

“And that’s why I brought out my last resort.”

She waved her wand as she said that.

When she did, snow from all around her assembled itself into a human form. Staring steadily at the figure, she nodded. “Well, I guess that about does it.” Then she took a small bottle out of her pocket.

When she opened the lid and poured the liquid onto her snow sculpture, the change was immediate. It transformed into one of the men that had been dismantled by Sario earlier.

“What I’ve got here is a special magical potion, you see, and when I apply it to snow, I can make a golem that looks just like the real deal. As long as no one punches him too hard, they shouldn’t be able to tell he’s a fake.”

“…………”

After listening to that much of her story, I had more or less figured out what she had been trying to do.

She said, “I couldn’t manage to photograph them in the act, so I used these guys and my buddy there and tried to reenact a poaching scene.”

“…But it was basically impossible to take photos while you were using magic to puppet the golems?”

“You know it. That’s why I ended up wrecking them back there, heh-heh-heh.” She laughed.

In short, it hadn’t gone well.

I’m sure it had been quite difficult for her to control two complex spells at the same time. Plus, since she was trying to capture photographs for the news, she obviously didn’t want to compromise with any sloppy pictures.

And that’s why I can’t really understand why she seems to be compromising with these fake photos, but…

“If I can distribute the pictures I’ve taken back home, they might sell for a lot to the newspapers. And if they take off, my name might get famous, too. It’ll be all good news, a cause for celebration.”

“Basically, as long as you can make money, nothing else matters?”

“Well, yeah, pretty much.”

Humans are creatures that crave excitement.

If word got out that these cherished creatures were being overhunted by some evil poachers, it was sure to become a topic of conversation across the land, though I’m not certain if this was a good thing or not.

And the overhunting of the angiers was a good subject from which to profit.

“But your photographs are fakes, right?”

“But it’s a true fact that they’re being poached. If I can take some extreme photos, it will draw attention to the issue, for better or worse.”

Bad news travels fast, after all.

But resorting to such extreme methods meant that at any point, the photos might be taken out of context and cause an uproar unconnected to their original purpose.

Once that fire was ablaze, there would be absolutely no way to control it.

“Even if people get fired up, you might not stick in anyone’s memory, in the end.”

“But the blaze will warm my pockets.”

Between us, the small fire was still giving off faint warmth as it flickered in the wind.

I see, so as long as you get your hands on some money, that’s all that matters, I suppose.

“I guess you did describe yourself as a bad person…”

She didn’t seem like someone who would have come from a land known for its nice people.

“By the way, Miss Witch, I hated my hometown. It was full of nothing but kind people. But among my hometown’s traditions, there’s just one that I like.”

That’s very abrupt.

“What is it?”

I tilted my head questioningly as I swallowed a mouthful of tea.

She said, “In my hometown, there’s a custom that if you are treated to a cup of tea, you have to do something in return. Well, it doesn’t have to be tea, anything will do, but the point is that if someone does something nice for you, you have to do something back. It’s a lovely tradition that is fitting for somewhere where the people are all brimming with kindness.”

“…………”

“By the way, the folks from my hometown are sticklers for manners. Really, any rude person who doesn’t return the favor after accepting someone’s charity can expect to have a terrible time and even be beaten to a pulp.”

“…………”

“And I was thinking of resuming my photography after this.”

She finished saying all that and drained her cold tea.

She seemed to have swallowed the rest of her words along with it, but her behavior spelled out her intentions quite clearly.

Rather than utilizing her helper puppets, which were sitting off to the side, completely deflated, she must have wanted to take photos that were more true to life.

Oh my.

“Are you serious?”

“I was very clear about this. I told you I’m a very vulgar person.”

“I thought you were just being self-deprecating.”

“It’s the truth.”

After draining the tea that still remained in my cup, I gazed up at the wide blue sky. The tea, which had still had some heat to it, quickly warmed my body.

When I exhaled, my white, cloudy breath gently fluttered through the air, swaying the flames between us.

“Charity and vulgarity sure look a lot alike…”

So through that sequence of events, I wound up doing some sketchy stuff in the snowy mountains with Sario.

In short, we went to take fake news photographs.

The idea was that we would use the puppets that looked like poachers to take the photos. But before that, for the dry run, I took the place of the puppets and assumed the role of a poacher trying to capture the rare creature known as an angier.

“Okay, first, strike whatever pose you like.”

With these rough instructions from Sario, the photography session began.

Flashes of light came from her wand.

“Heh-heh-heh… I’ve had my eye on you for a while… You’ve got very nice fur, haven’t you…?”

Sitting in a snowbank, I had Pochi in my lap and was stroking him.

“Myau!” cried the little creature. He was purring comfortably. If he hadn’t been so round, he really would have seemed like an ordinary cat.

This is actually quite pleasant…

“Hey, hey, wait a minute! Do you think the poachers pet the angiers with plenty of love like that? Try handling him more roughly, like an object!”

“Sure…”

Sario demanded a do-over. It seemed we were a little off from the image that she wanted.

“Okay, try using this thing.”

As she said that, she handed me a pole with some meat attached.

“Uh, okay.”

I did as I was told and tried to follow her instructions.

Flash, flash.

“Come on, you want this? Heh-heh-heh… Jump up and get it!”

“Myau!”

Pochi jumped up above the snow. He was looking straight at the meat. He chomped into the meat and spattered the snow with meat juices as he devoured it.

He’s so wild…

“Come on, what’s wrong with you?! Eat more fiercely, there on the snow! Listen, little buddy! You can’t eat your meat so neatly!”

“…………”

She’s even wilder…

“All right, next, try and stuff Pochi into this bag,” she said, and she handed me a large burlap sack.

“Uh…”

Again, I did as I was told and tried to follow her instructions.

Flash, flash.

“Will something like this do?”

With a shout, I brought the sack down on top of Pochi.

“No, no! Cram him in the bag with more of a sleazy look on your face!”

Flash, flash.

“Wait, I’m not sure how to give you the authentic expression you’re looking for…”

This is just the dry run, right?

“That expression is just right!”

Flash.

Sario continued taking photo after photo, creating image after image on slips of paper of me and the angier playing.

It seemed like I was just playing with a small creature in front of a noisy photographer, but Sario told me we were doing very important work.

“—Well, that’s the general idea, I guess.”

Sario showed me all the photos she had taken.

She was going to use pictures of me playing with Pochi as reference material for the real photos.

It was time to start taking the fake news photographs.

Sario and I took our wands in hand and stood beside each other.

We were looking ahead at the poachers—or their stand-ins—and one angier.

“Make them take this pose.”

Sario showed me one of the photos we had just taken.

“Sure thing.”

I waved my wand and moved the puppets.

It must have been next to impossible for her to act as photographer while also controlling the puppets with magic. So we had decided to divide the tasks to complete the photo shoot.

I controlled the puppets, and Sario took the pictures.

In other words, I was completely complicit in her good-for-nothing business.

“This will make it hard for me to go visit your hometown, I suppose…”

The camera flashed as the puppets chased Pochi around.

“Huh, why?”

Flash.

Sario looked at me with confusion on her face as she took more pictures. “You can just go. Don’t worry about it. If you are concerned about the photos we took in the dry run, I’m planning to throw those away, so there shouldn’t be any evidence left of you assisting me with my work.”

“It’s more of an issue of conscience.”

Even if there was no evidence left behind, that wouldn’t erase the fact that I had participated in this scheme. All the more so if the photos turned out to attract attention throughout the land, as she anticipated they would.

Because if I visited, I would be confronted with the result of our picture taking.

Sario would probably turn a profit from the fake news photos. They would probably attract attention. The people of her hometown would probably start taking action to safeguard the adorable angiers they kept as pets.

But it didn’t seem likely that everyone would commend Sario for her work. Naturally enough, there were sure to be some people who would be upset about the photos of the adorable creatures suffering through a terrible ordeal.

“You’re taking these photos with the understanding that there’s a possibility that you yourself will be the target of everyone’s anger, aren’t you?”

Her plan was to show off the fake photos, attract a lot of attention, create an outrage in her hometown, and then profit off the whole thing.

Of course, there was always the possibility that she would get burned by the fire she herself ignited.

Flash.

As she continued to take photos, she answered me. “Of course. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be taking these kinds of photos at all.”

“…………”

Beside her, as she continued snapping photos, I continued controlling the puppets. On top of the snow, the little creature known as an angier had been stuffed into a sack by the puppets. A bored-sounding “myau” came from the sack.

On the face of it, it looked like a miserable, pitiful scene.

Anger was certain to spread when Sario showed the picture to all the kind people who lived back home.

“Could I ask you something?”

“What?”

Flash.

She continued taking pictures.

Pochi leaped nimbly out of the burlap sack and rolled across the snow. Without a moment’s delay, Sario said, “Let’s take this one next,” and held up a photo of me she had taken earlier. I moved the puppets as she instructed.

Flash, flash.

We went right on staging the fake poaching scene.

I asked my question.

“Why are you taking such a roundabout route?”

If it was money she was after, surely there were easier ways to make it. I was almost certain it would be a safer move to continue taking honest photographs, without going out of her way to risk drawing the ire of the people of her hometown.

I had no doubt she would be able to draw plenty of attention if she engaged in outrage marketing like she said she was going to. And there was a chance that she might actually become famous.

But at the same time, there was the risk that she would lose everything.

I wondered if the images she was photographing were worth that risk.

As she kept snapping away, Sario told me, “The first time anyone ever brought an angier into my hometown was five years ago.”

According to Sario—

The angiers, with their small, adorable appearance, became popular in the blink of an eye. They were kept as pets in many households and loved by many families. Although they were expensive, everyone wanted one. The whole country became obsessed with them.

However—

“About half a year after they were brought in, there was a rash of angier abductions and abuse cases.”

Maybe it was because their popularity made them so expensive.

Originally, wealthy people had been the main customers for the angiers. Once the angiers started to get popular, there had been an increase in the number of burglaries targeting the wealthy.

The burglars hadn’t been after money. They had been targeting the small creatures, the angiers.

And around the same time, the angier cruelty cases had also started to show up. One after another, angiers were found lying in back alleys, injured or dead.

“Even though everyone there is supposed to be a good person, there are a few good-for-nothing bad guys. The people of my hometown concluded that someone from somewhere else was stealing the angiers and hurting them.”

The Principality of Alessari was known to be home to only good people.

Unsurprisingly, the people had started a frenzied search for anyone suspicious, in order to find the culprit who had been stealing and hurting the angiers.

And almost immediately, one suspect had emerged.

“Her name was Kaena. At the time, I think she was only about seventeen. She was kind of a creepy mage. She had black hair and black eyes, and she always wore nothing but black. She had no friends and was really quiet; she hardly ever talked to people.”

Kaena was apparently employed by one of the newspapers as a photographer. But perhaps because she didn’t have much in savings, or because her pay wasn’t steady, she always wore cheap clothing and ate cheap meals.

The thing that had directed suspicions toward creepy Kaena happened right after the uproar over the abductions and abuse began. One of the good citizens who was out patrolling as part of the hunt for the angier thieves had just happened to see something.

Kaena had a great many photographs of angiers in her possession.

“…And for that reason alone she was a suspect? That Kaena person?”

Simply for having photographs.

However—

“It was more than enough reason for people to look at her with suspicion. At the time, angiers were not creatures that could be easily purchased. The overwhelming majority of people were of the opinion that it was strange for a seventeen-year-old child to have bought one.”

Suspicious eyes had turned on Kaena.

Before long, the people had come to believe that the suspicious girl Kaena was a loose cannon who had been injuring the stolen angiers, then abandoning them in back alleys after preserving their suffering in photographs.

Before long, suspicion had turned to conviction in the minds of the people.

After all, she had always been creepy, so the people of the Principality of Alessari concluded that Kaena was their villain.

Once they had decided she was the culprit, more evidence had appeared, rising like bubbles to the surface.

For example, there was the fact that she had been hanging around in back alleys a lot lately. Or the fact that for the past few months, she had been acting differently than before and had started talking to people. Or the fact that she always seemed to want to get home early.

The people had thought for sure that all these things must have been because she was stealing angiers and tormenting them to blow off steam.

The people, flooded with feelings of righteousness, had descended on Kaena’s workplace. They’d exposed the many evil deeds she had committed. They’d gone around spreading the news about how bad of a person she was.

Once things had made it to that point, there was no need for evidence anymore.

In the minds of the people, she alone was the perpetrator who was abusing the angiers, and the people’s word itself was the proof.

And so the people had heaped their judgment upon the girl. Day after day, she would be showered with shouts of abuse just for walking down the street.

But after a little while, a certain fact had suddenly come to light.

“It turned out that the person who had been going around abducting angiers was a merchant who had been coming and going from another country. Apparently, once the merchant laid eyes on the profitable angiers, he planned to steal them from the houses of rich people, force them to breed, and make money off them. He was arrested when he was breaking in to steal an angier, and the truth came to light.”

“…………”

Basically, it was all a misunderstanding.

“Kaena had started hanging around in back alleys because she was trying to protect the angiers.”

The small, adorable angiers mostly lived in the snowy mountains. The creatures must have been very stressed when they were suddenly brought to the Principality of Alessari, where there were four different seasons. Apparently, the stress had caused many of them to bang their heads against walls and to run away from home.

“This fact didn’t become very widely known, but there were a lot of rich people who didn’t take good care of their angiers and abandoned them in back alleys. They purchased them because they were charmed by their sweet outward appearance, but they must have been bewildered when the creatures suddenly started acting strangely. If they abandoned their pets in back alleys and kept silent about it, they could pretend they had been stolen and play the victims.”

“And Kaena had been looking after the abandoned ones?”

Sario nodded.

“All the angiers she had rescued were turned over to a government shelter. In other words, she was completely unconnected to the abduction incidents.”

“…And what about the pictures she had?”

“The guy had only seen pictures of Kaena’s own angier.”

The girl, who was seventeen at the time, had no friends and was always by herself. When the angiers had started to become popular, Kaena, like many people, had been taken with the creatures’ adorable appearance.

So she had cut back on her daily expenses and forgone fashionable clothes in order to save enough money to buy one.

But the people of the city hadn’t believed a word she said. Even though the staff at the facility had spoken up and insisted that it was all a misunderstanding, their appeals hadn’t reached anyone’s ears.

The tragic misunderstanding had allowed the people’s feelings of righteousness to run wild.

“Ultimately, the incident came to a close with the arrest of the merchant. Happily ever after. The land was peaceful once again. No one paid any attention to what became of the pitiful seventeen-year-old after that.”

Flash.

As Sario continued her story, she took more pictures of the angier in the snow, starting up again as if she had just remembered what she was doing.

“It’s strange, you know. Those guys in town think that just because they caught one merchant, that all the bad guys targeting angiers have disappeared from this world. Even though there’s no way other people don’t have their eyes on such rare and lucrative animals.”

If one person had been caught stealing, it followed that there were others.

“For example, who knows how many people have located the angiers’ habitat and are poaching them, or trying to anyway?”

“I’m sure.”

Flash.

Sario continued taking pictures. “That’s why I’ve got to show everyone. I’ve got to show them that there are still dirty merchants out here, you know?”

“…And you don’t care if the photos you show them are fakes?”

“It’s fine, obviously. After all, nobody back home cares about the truth anyway—,” she answered.

I looked over at the girl who was still taking pictures beside me.

A photographer and magical novice dressed in a white robe. She had brown hair, and just by looking at her, I could see that she was a different person than the Kaena who had been featured in her story. But—

“…Where is Kaena now?” I asked her.

She stopped taking pictures and looked at me. “She doesn’t exist anymore.” With a wicked smile on her face, she said, “She changed her hair and her name and decided to live as a good-for-nothing mage, you see.”

The seasons changed, and it was early summer.

“Welcome to the Principality of Alessari!”

I walked down the road with the sound of a saluting soldier’s greeting at my back.

I had heard this was a wonderful place, with a strong sense of public order, and that it was inhabited only by kind people.

It was typical for people here to be very considerate. For example, if a traveler was wandering aimlessly down the street, it was a given that locals would call out to her—and not only that, they would even walk with the stranger to her destination, chatting all the way.

“Good day, Lady Witch. Where are you from?”

“If you like, how about coming in for a drink at our bar? Oh, of course, there’s no charge, heh-heh.”

“You must be tired from your long journey. I could prepare you a very nice room at our inn.”

And so on.

“…Uh, no, I’m good, thanks.”

Honestly, having so much goodwill hurled at me made me recoil. Right from the outset, I didn’t intend to stay for very long.

So I turned down all the generous people who approached me. “No, no, I’m fine, oh-hoh-hoh.”

According to what I had heard, in this land there was apparently a saying that you had to pay back any kindness you were given. Knowing that, I was even less inclined to ask for anything from the people here.

“Good day, Lady Witch—”

“If you like, how about—?”

“You must be tired from your long journey—”

But even after I declined, it wasn’t long before more people approached me with the same types of offers.

“…………”

So pushy…

Their good intentions are very, very pushy…

“No, uh, really, I’m all right…”

This overbearing goodwill was probably one of the reasons why the Principality of Alessari was renowned as a wonderful place. Supposedly, it was common knowledge in nearby lands that the people in Alessari believed in helping one another. Anyone who did not appreciate this mentality of cooperation was unlikely to ever go there in the first place, because they would find it so irritating.

What it all came down to was that the only people who visited this place were the people who already approved of their customs. So naturally, every appraisal of the city claimed it was a relatively good place.

So I walked on and quickly became fed up with the actual place, which was completely unlike its reputation.

I walked down the main avenue for a little while and happened upon a bakery stall.

There was a calming fragrance wafting gently through the air. My legs floated me toward the stall just like a fluttering butterfly tempted by a flower’s nectar.

“Oh, miss, you’re a traveler, right? Welcome, welcome!” A plump middle-aged woman greeted me. “The bread’s freshly baked!”

The fluffy loaves of bread were lined up neatly along the front of the stall. They seemed to be calling to me sweetly, “Come on, go ahead, eat us!”

Come to think of it, I considered, I haven’t had lunch yet—

“All right, I think I’ll buy one—”

My hand did not hesitate as it pulled out my wallet. I, the traveler in question, frequently found myself helpless in front of bread. It’s because it smells so delicious, you see. I just can’t help it.

The woman running the stall watched me loosen my purse strings and spoke up.

“No, no need, it’s free. Take it and go!”

Free…!

“Huh, I can have it for free…?”

“You’re such a cute traveler, so it’s a gift! Oh-hoh-hoh!” The baker chuckled.

A gift? Is it okay to accept? Could this be the best thing that’s ever happened…?

Normally, I would have readily accepted this favor with a thankyou. Normally, I would have already accepted the bread.

But I hadn’t forgotten.

In this land, if you accepted any favors, you had to pay them back somehow.

Which meant if I accepted bread for free, I would be obligated to repay the favor. Probably, if I was a good person, I wouldn’t mind paying her back as thanks for getting bread.

But frankly speaking, I’m kind of a vulgar person.

If she was giving it away for free, I wanted to get it for free.

I mean, I didn’t have any particular objection to paying money for it.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll pay.”

“I said you don’t need to pay. It’s a gift, to celebrate your visit! Take it and go!”

“No, no, I couldn’t. I’m paying.”

“It’s fine!”

“No, no, no way.”

To be honest, I wanted to pay the money and be done with it. I had no intention of developing any further relationship with this baker. I had only just arrived there, after all. I wanted to keep this strictly a relationship between customer and shopkeeper.

After we argued back and forth for a while, the woman backed down.

“No helping it, I guess. All right, I wonder if you would donate to our fund-raiser, then? How would that be?”

She set a box up on the counter.

“…………”

It was a collection box with a photograph affixed to it.

It was a picture of a small creature stretched out on the snow.

“This is called an angier. In our land, it’s a popular animal to keep as a pet.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo as the shopkeeper explained things to me.

She told me how the creatures known as angiers had first been brought to their land about five years earlier. They were rare and expensive but immediately became popular because of their adorable appearance, she said.

Reports of their popularity immediately spread among the merchants as well.

The merchants learned that the people were eager to purchase angiers and started to poach the animals in the mountains.

The poachers forcefully captured the angiers that ran through the snow trying to escape, handled them roughly, and sold them off wholesale to the Principality of Alessari.

The photograph on the box, which depicted an angier imprisoned in a cage sitting on the snow, showed the true state of the pitiful angiers. The picture had briefly captured the public’s interest.

In a bad way, of course.

“This photograph gave us all a big shock. After all, no matter how you look at it, this picture must have been taken by one of the poachers overhunting the angiers, right?”

“…………”

“Of course, the mage named Sario who took this picture and made money off it was driven into exile. She was complicit in the angier poaching, after all.”

She told me that the evil mage Sario was widely condemned. On top of everything else, Sario had distributed her photos and commissioned an article about the overhunting of the angiers, which some said had only led to a further increase in poaching.

Because she had raised the issue, many more people learned where to find the angiers’ habitat.

Before, when no one knew where the angiers lived, the poachers had just captured a few of them in secret.

It was all very sad, a miserable state of affairs.

The people were deeply enraged by it.

“So we drove Sario out and started focusing on conservation.”

Apparently, every place in town was doing fund-raising for angier conservation. And, the baker told me, during their conservation efforts, the local mages also periodically uncovered poachers in the mountains.

They were protecting the angiers from bad people.

But if we were to reword these facts—

“I could also take that as meaning you started to protect the angiers after this photo was made public, right?”

It seemed to me like if Sario hadn’t raised the issue, the angiers might have gone on getting overhunted forever.

“Ha-ha-ha, what’s that? Are you trying to suggest that we only started protecting the angiers because Sario took that photo?” The bakery owner roared with laughter. “You’ve got it all wrong, Miss Witch. The mages doing the conservation asked the local people in the area. And the word is that people from our lands were going around exposing poachers long before Sario’s photograph made the rounds.”

“…Is that true?”

“Sure is.” The woman nodded and said, “It’s just that we ramped up our conservation efforts after her pictures caught a lot of attention and kicked up a big fuss.”

What they were doing hadn’t changed one bit—she told me.

Backing up, to late winter.

I spent a little bit of time with Sario up in the snowy hills, then went on down the mountain.

She told me she was planning to spend a little more time in the mountains taking photographs, then return to her hometown. “I’ll stick it out a little longer, in hopes that I happen across some poachers,” she explained.

I didn’t really understand her reasons for staying, when she had already taken her photographs, but I reasoned that as a photographer and journalist, Sario must be fastidious about her work.

Without really looking back, and without running into any other people, after several hours, I arrived safely at a village at the foot of the mountains.

It was my first time visiting that village.

I didn’t bother to count properly, but there were so few houses that it would have been easy enough to count them, and there was no gate and no one standing watch. There was also no snow. Overflowing with greenery, the village seemed peaceful.

“Oh! A mage?! We welcome you!”

As soon as they saw me arrive at their village riding on my broom, the villagers seemed completely delighted.

“Come now, come in! You must be exhausted!”

“Please, you must come try our village’s specialty!”

Oh my, they seem very friendly.

Wearing a polite smile as I accepted their hospitality, I floated along as they showed me into their village.

“Where did you come from?”

“Please, you must stay at our inn tonight.”

“I’ll bring you something to eat at the inn later.”

And so on and so forth.

The kindness of the people in the village was dazzling, and oppressive, to the point that I was convinced their heated passion must have been what melted the snow.

The wooden houses standing here and there throughout the village were old, and in the gardens, surrounded by fences, I could see small children and angiers playing together.

I guess raising angiers must be in fashion in this village—

Could this possibly be the hometown—the Principality of Alessari—where Sario was born…?

I had that thought for a moment but decided that the village was too close for that to be possible. If I recalled correctly, Sario had told me that her hometown was much farther south.

“Aren’t they adorable?! Our village’s angiers are very sociable!” One of the villagers showing me around told me, with plenty of enthusiasm, “In our village, we raise angiers to be pets, you see, and sell them in neighboring lands. We’re famous enough for it that if you ask about the hometown of the angiers, folks will point you our way!”

“Wow…”

According to the people in the village, the angiers had been raised there since antiquity. After being kept by humans for many years, the angiers basically had no fear of people.

They also told me that the angiers living in the nearby mountains were probably the wild descendants of animals that had escaped from the village long ago.

That explained why they had little wariness of humans; if they had originally been bred in the village, it was perfectly understandable.

When the people of the village had told me that much—

“But recently, poachers have started coming into the mountains.”

They also spoke up about a problem the village had been dealing with recently. Apparently, word had gotten around from somewhere that the sociable angiers could be captured in the nearby mountains. That, plus the fact that the creatures could be sold for high prices in certain distant lands, had led to an increase in the number of poachers.

“…I see.”

I glanced around and saw that there were several men slumped on the ground in the shade of some nearby trees. They were tied up with ropes.

“So then, what’s the deal with the people over there?” I asked.

“A group of poachers.”

It must have been a familiar sight for the villagers.

They answered me quickly.

They said:

“Recently, a mage who’s been staying up in the mountains has been apprehending each and every group of poachers for us.”

Apparently, the weird mage had been going around catching poachers because they were “interfering with her photography.”

I reasoned it must have been the girl who had told me that she had gone into the mountains because she wanted to get rich doing outrage marketing.

I’m truly amazed.

“What about that is good-for-nothing?”

As I thought, charity and vulgarity sure look a lot alike.